Providing FREE Broadband Services to All Residents of a Municipality

The costs of providing broadband to everyone in a town are substantially less per subscriber than
when subscriptions are purchased individually. Various towns and villages in the United States are
attempting to have broadband made available to everyone, with varying degrees of success. There seem
to be at least 4 ways to consider: (i) through the local cable company; (ii) through the telephone
company; (iii) separate wiring of the entire town with optical fiber; and (iv) through creation of
"hot spots" that can be used by anyone in town, but which may not have universal coverage, I
would suspect. Some useful articles about wiring an entire town for broadband services are:

July 2005 article "Wireless Broadband: What It Takes to Go Public" . This article, which is must reading
for anyone interested in this subject (providing costs among other useful information), begins:

The wireless technology known as Wi-Fi has already widened Internet access through “hot spots” at
businesses such as Starbucks and at airports. Now it’s enabling cities to create public broadband
networks that turn entire neighborhoods into wireless access zones.

2005 Press Release of Level 7 Solutions, LLC stating to read:
Highly
Technical Report on Broadband Deployment in Rural Area
Level 7 Solutions, LLC and BCCISP have
entered into an agreement to bring wireless broadband into the Magnolia, Texas area. Broadband
Internet access will be achieved through the use of a wireless mesh network which will blanket the
entire town center with wireless technology. The partnership will then expand out to surrounding
existing neighborhoods and into many of the new neighborhoods planned for the area. Internet speeds of
up to 4 mb will be possible from anywhere in the network of wireless access points. With a laptop
computer, a wireless card, and an account, one could have uninterrupted Internet access throughout the
entire town. Rollout of the network is planned for Summer 2005.

There are three important things to remember about community broadband systems:

your friendly federal and state legislators have been encouraged by campaign contributions (or possibly worse) to either outlaw such systems (in about 15 states)
or make it difficult for community broadband systems to get going; instead of encouraging fast, universal broadband service (such as water, electricity and
telephone service), broadband is being restricted by governmental and monopolistic practices, with the result that the U.S. is only 6th in rank as a country for
broadband usage (behind Korea, Japan, Iceland, Germany and the United Kingdom); broadband speeds are in some cases 1/100th the speed now being provided in some countries;
and the cost is substantially higher for the inferior broadband service available in many parts of the U.S.

the wealth of the nation and each of its communities will be dependent on fast, low-cost, universal broadband service to give the greatest opportunity for residents
of the U.S. to compete with people living in other countries, and that the communities in the U.S. that are able to overcome the massive barriers created out of self-interest
to make it difficult if not impossible for a community to have universal broadband service -- will be able to be more creative and productive and earn more money than other
areas of the country

the town attorney general, if appointed, should be able to obtain more than enough money through law enforcement activities against major corporations to provide FREE
broadband service to the entire community, with so much money left over that the community would hardly notice the expenditure (of about $15-$20 per month per family or
$180 to $240 per year). If you are interested in finding out about the various obstacles that your friendly legislators have put in your path, read the article entitled
"Let There Be Wi-Fi - Broadband is the electricity of the 21st century -- and much of America is being left in the dark" in the January/February 2006 edition of Washington Monthly. The article, by Robert W. McChesney and John Podesta, states in part:

In the not-so-distant-future, broadband will be an indispensable part of economic, personal, and public life. Those countries that achieve universal broadband are going to hold significant advantages over those who don't. And so far, the United States is poised to be a follower -- not a leader -- in the broadband economy. * * *

American residents and businesses now pay two to three times as much for slower and poorer quality
service than countries like South Korea or Japan. Since 2001, according to the International
Telecommunications Union, the United States has fallen from fourth to 16th in the world in broadband
penetration. Thomas Bleha recently argued in Foreign Affairs that what passes for broadband in
the United States is "the slowest, most expensive and least reliable in the developed
world." While about 60 percent of U.S. households do not subscribe to broadband because it is
either unavailable where they live or they cannot afford it, most Japanese citizens can access a high-
speed connection that's more than 10 times faster than what's available here for just $22 a month [to
the Japanese subscriber]. (Japan is now rolling out ultra-high speed access at more than 500 times
what the Federal Communications Commission considers to be "broadband" in this country.)

In an 4/14/05 article entitled "United States Falling behind in Broadband" published in HowtoWeb.Com, the following comparisons were made:

73% of South Koreans have broadband access while 20% of U.S. citizens don't even have the option of
obtaining broadband Internet access. And to make things worse our broadband access is much slower than
some countries. How did the U.S. get behind so quickly in Internet connection speed. BusinessWeek
reports: In 2000, the OECD said the U.S. ranked third in Net users connecting at high-speed among the
top-30 world economies. The next year it fell to fourth. Now it's 11th, according to the OECD. And
fast connections in the U.S. are slower than in many other countries. A top-of-the-line cable modem in
the U.S. carries five megabits per second, while broadband connections in Asian countries like Japan
and South Korea are often 20 times faster. South Korea is, in fact, the world leader in broadband. And
unlike the U.S., it has multiple companies offering most of the country DSL lines that are also faster
than what's available in the U.S., thanks in no small part to government encouragement and
sponsorship.